Spencer, who is President of the white nationalist think tank National Policy Institute, made the comments at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) during February.

Initially dismissing the claim, Depeche Mode frontman Dave Gahan has now described Spencer as a “c**t” in a new interview. He told Billboard: “This guy gets way too much publicity already. What’s dangerous about someone like Richard Spencer is, first of all, he’s a c**t – and he’s a very educated c**t, and that’s the scariest kind of all.”

Gahan added: “I think it was one of those things he threw out there for whatever. But he’s not that type of guy – not like the other guy, the Milo [Yiannopoulos], an attention seeker, a bit crazy obviously. I saw [Milo] on Bill Maher and I was just like, ‘Wow, he really is a nut job.’ Those people to me aren’t so dangerous, but this guy’s [Spencer] got some weight behind him. I don’t like that… I haven’t had as many phone calls or texts from people over something like that – friends here and in the city, and other artists who were kind of shocked and like, ‘What’s this?'”

“My son Jimmy, who is 24, he was kind of shocked by it… He was one of the first to say, ‘You got to make a response immediately.’ Because people read shit – unfortunately, as we know – and they interpret it as being real. It’s hard these days, because you really do have to search what you’re reading and where that information came from.”

Sharethrough (Mobile)

Gahan also explained how his band’s music has been mistaking for containing right-wing references or allusions: “I think over the years there’s been a number of times when things of ours have been misinterpreted – either our imagery, or something where people are not quite reading between the lines. If anything, there’s a way more sort of socialist – working class, if you like – industrial-sounding aesthetic to what we do. That’s where we come from. We come from the council estates of Essex, which is a really shitty place, just 30 minutes east of London, where they stuck everybody when London was getting too overpopulated in the late ’60s. So I don’t quite get what he was [saying].”

Speaking in another interview with the New York Post, Gahan said of Spencer: “I saw the video of him getting punched [during the Trump protests]; he deserved it.”

Depeche Mode’s upcoming album ‘Spirit’ will be released on Friday (March 17). It was produced by Simian Mobile Disco’s James Ford.